My face itched. I reached up with my free hand to rub at it, watching her expression go from relieved to concerned as she watched me. “You shouldn’t touch it for a while,” she said. “While it heals.”
My fingers encountered the soft gauze and bandages, and she offered me a faint smile, hand tightening around mine.
“Will it heal?” I asked. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“We did what we could, but the HEX hound’s claws were vicious,” the unfamiliar voice from before said, and I looked up to see a tall man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee standing by my bed.
“Dad’s the best healer we’ve got,” Acacia said earnestly. “He really did the best he could, Joe.”
Dad?
I blinked up at the tall man, who was looking at his daughter with sympathy. There might have been a resemblance, but it was hard to tell with the facial hair. “I’m sure he did,” I mumbled reassuringly to Acacia. They’d done all they could. Did that mean they hadn’t been able to fix it? Had I lost my eye?
That would be ironic. The thought came unbidden to my mind, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. It seemed to be a nervous habit of mine, and one I should probably try to break.
“What happened?” I asked instead.
“We were all fighting,” Acacia said slowly. “And then you . . . ran into FrostNight.” She glared at me. “Which was stupid, and reckless . . .”
“Just tell me what happened.”
She glared for another moment, then continued. “I felt you gather us all up, but . . . I also felt FrostNight constrict. It fell in on itself, and I went back to find you. You were lying there, in the middle of the star.”
“He saved me,” I murmured. She just looked at me. “We were going to destroy FrostNight together. He must have pushed me out at the last minute.”
She hesitated, then squeezed my hand again. “That makes sense.”
I actually did laugh this time, but bitterly. “How does any of this make sense?”
Acacia glanced up at her father, then looked back to me. “Well . . . Binary are, of course, machines. They don’t understand things like souls and free will, so they wouldn’t have thought that Joaquim could do anything other than fulfill his directive. HEX does understand how souls work, but they believe themselves to have ultimate power over them . . . so they, also, could not have predicted Joaquim’s capacity for free will. You’re the one who showed him that, Joe. You showed him he had a c
hoice, and by choosing to die”—her gaze got a bit more intense; I think she didn’t entirely approve of that decision—“you showed him that he, also, had a choice. And he chose to save you.”
I was surprised at how little I felt. I supposed I was probably in shock. I had expected to die, and in the end, Joaquim had saved me like I hadn’t been able to save him. I remained silent, thinking, remembering those last moments. Finally, I found another question.
“Where’s Hue?”
“Well,” Acacia’s father said, “that’s the other thing. The MDLF seems to have taken up permanent residence inside your body, and we have been unable to extract him.”
“Extract . . . ?”
“When you were expelled from FrostNight, you were one. It seems you still are, and I am not certain it can be undone. Beyond that, I believe he is helping to heal your eye.”
I frowned, then immediately winced as the expression pulled at the skin around my eyes. Hue was bound with me? And was helping to heal my eye? He’d never shown any kind of healing ability before. And he’d taken up permanent residence inside my body?
Hue? I thought, but got no response. I was aware of him now that I concentrated, dimly, but . . .
To distract myself, I looked around.
I was obviously in an infirmary, but an unfamiliar one. There were some machines I recognized and others I didn’t at all, and the overall color scheme was odd for an infirmary. Instead of the stark white I was used to, there were mahogany wood cabinets, pinkish marble floors, beige walls. Despite my not recognizing the room, something about it was naggingly familiar.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“TimeWatch,” Acacia said. “Sick bay.”
That would explain the familiar colors. I’d been to TimeWatch once before, when Acacia had taken me captive. . . .
“I’m not a prisoner, am I?”